Women as seducers and temptresses Flashcards
Quotes and critics (10 cards)
“Subversion of naturalism amounts to a refusal of oppressive normativity.”
Sammells
Fay: You’ve been a widower for three days. Have you considered a second marriage yet?
[…]
McLeavy: Someone like yourself?
Fay: Exactly. (She takes a clothes brush and brushes him down.) Realize your potential. Marry at once.
Orton shows the ways Fay tries to adopt the role of McLeavy’s new wife and ‘replace’ Mrs McLeavy, wearing her dress and slippers.
Lastly, Fay boldly states that McLeavy ought to marry someone like her, suggesting that he should ‘realise her potential and marry at once’.
McLeavy: Pack your bags! You’re not being arrested from my house
*Fay dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief
[…]
Fay holds out her hand to Hal. Hal shakes it and kisses her
[…]
Dennis kisses Fay’s hand
[…]
Truscott: What an amazing woman McMahon is. She’s got away with it again. She must have influence with Heaven.
Hal, Dennis and Inspector Meadows kiss Fay’s hand before Meadows arrests her. This dramatic and farcical sequence of events reflects Orton’s possible misogynistic view of society and women as seducers through Fay.
The men mimic a chivalric position and kneel (knightly/noble love). Fay can manipulate those around her.
The handcuffs should symbolise criminality and something severe but it turns into a moment of flirtation.
“Death removes Gloriana from the corrupting realm of desire” -
Stallybrass
“Gratiana’s transformation symbolises the possibility of at least individual regeneration in the dark world presented in the play”
Evans
Marxist reading
Gratiana is a single mother who has been widowed, she is merely trying to survive, subjugated under the inequality of the feudal system, resorting to this action since she is desperate.
Duchess: I’ll kill him in his forehead, hate there feed-’
[…]
And here comes he whom my heart points unto, / His bastard son, but my love’s true begot’
[…]
Upon my hand sir, troth I think you’d fear / To kiss my hand too if my lip stood there.
He kisses her
(1.2)
Duchess: Why, now thou’rt sociable: let’s in and feast / Loudest music sound: pleasure is banquet’s quest.
(3.5)
The Duchess is portrayed as a manipulative and morally corrupt woman, unfaithful wife. Her affair with Spurio, the illegitimate son of the Duke, reveals her power as a seducer who undermines the sanctity of marriage.
The Duchess actively pursues Spurio, reinforcing the negative stereotype of women being insatiable and seductresses.
Gratiana: Men know, that know us, / We are so weak their words can overthrow us.
Gratiana: That enchant our sex; these are the means / That govern our affections. That woman will / Not be trouble with the mother long
Gratiana falls victim to his temptation and manipulates her own daughter. She suggests that men who ‘know us’ can ‘overthrow us’ with their words. Thus, Gratiana espouses the misogynistic view that women will succumb to immorality if tempted.
However, in the case of Gratiana, she redeems herself, repenting and being forgiven by her sons.
Castiza: I cry you mercy; lady I mistook you / Pray did you see my mother?
Middleton adopts a more moralistic tone, highlighting that the most well-respected female characters are those that remain chaste and virtuous such as Castiza and Gloriana, who refuse to be advanced on by the immoral men of the court.
“Women have internalised patriarchal ideology”
Clare
